Jack White may be known as one of the most influential guitarists of his generation, but according to the man himself, the instrument was never his first love.
Speaking at an intimate Q&A session at Oxford University, White reveals that his original passion was for drums – yet somehow, it was the guitar that ultimately gave his music a sense of “validity.”
Looking back on The White Stripes’ rise to fame, White credits the band’s success to its stripped-down, no-frills approach: “The White Stripes was the project I had that was all about simplicity,” he says [via NME]. “That happened to be the thing that people related to. It spoke to people and people connected with it and it kept growing and growing.”
“When you’re passionate about stuff, you don’t know if the things you’re passionate about will also be something interesting for other people. Maybe someone thinks ‘I want to be a stand-up comedian’. You [might] try to do stand-up and some people laugh, but you don’t get a standing ovation. Then you go and do this play because your friend was in it, then that’s when you got a standing ovation. It’s like ‘Well I didn’t mean to do that’…That’s how I feel about the guitar.”
As White explains, his heart was initially set on drums – and if things had gone his way, he’d probably be behind a drum kit instead: “I didn’t care about the guitar. I wanted to be a drummer my whole life. That was all I cared about,” he says.
“I’ve played drums many times live and people think it’s OK, but [it’s] not something that really connects with people. For some reason, the guitar part, that expression has some kind of validity to it. I don’t know why.”
White also notes that while The White Stripes’ stripped-back approach has been well-loved by fans, he makes a point to break away from that formula in his other projects in order to “make my head work in different ways.”
Check out the musician’s full speech below.
The post “I didn’t care about the guitar. I wanted to be a drummer my whole life”: Jack White says he picked up the guitar for “validity” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.